1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to the field of information handling system restore media, and more particularly to a system and method for creating a CD to restore an information handling system image to a desired state, such as an initial manufacture state.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
In order to manage the wide variety of information handling system configurations that are available, businesses often purchase information handling systems in sets having identical or nearly identical hardware and software configurations. In some instances, a business provides an information handling system manufacturer with an image having the business' desired software configuration to load on information handling systems built by the manufacturer with the business' desired hardware configuration. Information handling system manufacturers typically store the image on a network with manufacturing load scripts that copy the image to manufactured information handling systems with conventional imaging applications, such as Ghost and Powerquest. Thus, the business gets sets of information handling systems that make information technology administration more manageable. To aid in this management, manufacturers typically provide a restore media, generally a CD, that restores the factory software state existing after initial manufacture to an information handling system by copying the image used at manufacture back onto the information handling system. The restore media is used to re-image inoperative systems or to prepare systems with replaced hard disc drives for use by loading the desired image.
Typically a restore CD is manually created with custom engineering separate from the manufacturing image in what is generally a relatively lengthy cycle time. An engineer generally must prepare CD load scripts that enable the restore CD to re-image an information handling system automatically. The manual engineering of CD load scripts often introduces process variations that impact the quality of the restore CD as well as an image restored by the CD. Additional errors are sometimes introduced when the restore CD is initially burned, either inadvertently by the engineer or through hardware or software errors. After the initial restore CD is burned, it is typically labeled with explanatory documents included, and then sent as a master copy to a replicator to have a copy made for each information handling system having the associated image. Errors are sometime introduced at labeling and during replication that impact the quality of the restore CDs that are mass produced for distribution with manufactured systems. Such restore CD errors have an especially negative impact on the experience of information handling system users since users who have turned to the restore CD are already having difficulties. Further, manual engineering of restore CDs does not scale well to mass production, has poor repeatability and has difficulty adapting to product divergence from an initial factory build to later-developed configurations. In addition, manual handling of the master tends to be time consuming and subjects the master to risk of damage.